where we visit the ancient cities of Antiphellos, Sebeda, Apollonia, Aperlai, Teimiussa, Simena, Istlada and Andriake.
What a fantastic area. I had been through here at least threetimesbefore. Even with that list (above) of eight sites that we visited this time, I’d still like to come back to this region by bicycle by a different route that links up at least eight more sites that would be new to me. And it’s not just about old rocks. The views are nice too.
We started with an afternoon in Kaş which is ancient Antiphellos. The theater has been thoroughly restored.
where we visit the ancient cities of Kalabantia, Pydnai, Letoon, Xanthos and Patara.
A multi-day trek on the Likya Yolu, finally! We walked over the busy Ramadan holiday when Gülizar — the motivation behind this adventure — had time off work. People come from all the world to walk this trail, and even with the crowds I was impressed on the first day — beautiful Mediterranean and mountain views.
When I was complaining about the high cost of flight tickets from Cebu back to Turkey, Alex, a young student from Qingdao (he’s now studying in PEI), asked me if I had looked at China Eastern Airlines. He was thinking of visiting a friend in İstanbul and said their prices seemed reasonable. Indeed it was about half the price of other tickets, and they even let you pay for the bicycles at the same time. Why hadn’t that come up in my searches? Check-in at the airport in Cebu went very smoothly, and our luggage went straight through to İstanbul.
China gives 24-hour visas on arrival so an 18-hour layover sounded fun. We arrived in Shanghai at about 7am after the short red-eye flight. The only place we could find to get money at the Shanghai airport was an overpriced ATM (flat 35 cny fee). We brought lots of warm clothes with us but left a heavy carry-on at the left luggage at the airport. Next was a cheap (18 cny/person) 24-hour metro pass — not available from the machines, but the guard at the turnstyles sold them and spoke enough English to make it easy for us. Woohoo, we’re on our way to Shanghai!
We got off the metro at the Yuyuan Garden station and were greeted with this gate:
The end of a wonderful three months in the Philippines. Where to spend the last week? We were at the southern end of Panaon Island so the first thing to do was get a ferry from Benit to Surigao City on Mindanao. From Surigao City, however, ferries go all over the place. We decided on the surfing island of Siargao.
First we had a short ride on Mindanao from Lipata to Surigao City where we found an ear doctor who loved to bicycle and had even completed an Ironman! Ferda’s ear was healing well, he said, but she still wasn’t allowed in the water.
Banahaw
We enjoyed Surigao City’s waterfront night market,
Leyte treated us well — friendly people, pleasant riding, tasty food, good places to stay, and — one of the highlights of our trip to the Philippines! — whale sharks.
When we were doing a little research for our ride in southern Cebu (which never happened), I read about visiting the whale sharks near Oslob. Sounds like a disaster of feeding the sharks and too many tourists. That’s when I learned about whale sharks at Padre Burgos. Our goal in Leyte was to go see the whale sharks there. The ride from Hilongos to Padre Burgos via the provincial capital of Maasin was often narrow with too much traffic.
